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c h a p t e r f i v e “Power in the Blood” Menstrual Taboos and Women’s Power in an African Instituted Church deidre helen crumbley Religion has been a source of power for women, or a source of subordination, or both. —Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel, 1999 Menstrual taboos are often associated with low social status and the exclusion of women from arenas of explicit formal power.1 However, the gender practices of the Church of the Lord-Aladura (CLA), an African Instituted Church (AIC) based in Nigeria, complicate this relationship. In this church, menstrual taboos coexist with the ordination of women and a symmetrical structure of parallel male and female oªces.2 While all menstruating women are prohibited from sacred space and ritual acts, a woman may theoretically rise to the primacy, the highest executive church oªce. Postmenopausal female clerics have the same duties and responsibilities as their male counterparts. This essay investigates this complex conjunction of gender equality and sexbased , age-related ritual exclusion as it a¤ects women’s access to and exercise of power within church structures. It focuses on nexuses of power, rituals of control , and protocols of subordination. Although Isabel Mukonyora (see chapter 4) and I both bring questions about gender and power to our studies of contemporary African Instituted (or, in Mukonyora’s terms, Initiated) Churches, Mukonyora o¤ers a woman-focused exploration of agency and creative resistance in the face of explicit and divinely sanctioned patriarchy. While Mukonyora listens carefully to the voices of women and observes the gendered resonances of the Masowe Apostles’ ritual actions, I focus on the structural relations of power and how menstrual taboos delimit women’s access to authoritative ritual roles.3 Menstruation is a dramatic gender marker that distinguishes the male from the female body, even when the body is as feminized as the male bodies of hijra, a “third sex” of spiritual practitioners in India.4 Church of the Lord menstrual taboos are explicit reminders of this procreative physiological distinctness. The CLA constitution contains this proviso: “Women shall remain behind the tent during the period of their menstruation. They are not permitted to enter any holy place until after the expiration of seven days of their menstruation.”5 Although this is the only menstruation-related restriction that is explicitly stated in church documents, it has significant implications for women and gender relations that ramify throughout the organization. CLA menstrual taboos set up patterns of male-female interaction, which, like all power relations, are nuanced by the complexities of power exchange.6 A dramatic incident that took place while I was doing fieldwork on the CLA in Nigeria highlights the multivalent meanings of menstrual ritual practices. When a young CLA priest invited me to enter the church building to complete an interview , I explained that I was menstruating. His response was: “Thank you, sister . You know, that could have harmed me.” It would seem, then, that within this belief system, while being menstruous puts constraints on the physical movements of a woman, it also empowers her to cause harm or protect as she chooses. The cost of this empowerment is that she is excluded from sacred spaces, objects, and discourses. African Instituted Churches tend to provide greater opportunity for female leadership than older mission churches. Oyeronke Olajubu explains this di¤erence in women’s power and position between European-derived and distinctly African forms of Christianity in contemporary Nigeria as a consequence of Yoruba culture and tradition.7 She argues that, paradoxically, the same factor plays a strong role in limiting women’s participation in certain ritual activities, providing insight into the coexistence of female ordination and menstrual taboos in CLA. In her study of women in new Nigerian religious movements, Rosalind Hackett notes that, although women play crucial roles in church life and development , they are often limited to church activities focused on children and women. Furthermore, even when a woman founds an AIC, her successor is often male.8 While this has been the general pattern for Nigerian AICs, CLA is an exception. Its constitution specifically provides that women clergy serve as heads of their own congregations and direct regional and provincial units of the church organization as well. The most germane interpretation of gender dynamics in AICs is the “ceremonial ” versus “political” typology of authority suggested by Bennetta Jules-Rosette. 82 Diasporic Knowledge [3.138.114.94] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 18:05...

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